The Stages of Meditation

When you begin to meditate for any significant length of time. You will begin to notice that there are definite stages that you will encounter.

In this article, I’ll go through the ones I have experienced.

When you begin to meditate, the noise of your untamed monkey-like mind is rampant. For most people, you have lived your entire life never having attempted to focus the mind.

The result is a mind untamed, and undisciplined. A Monkey like mind jumping all over the place. You need to tame the beast and bring it under control!

When you first sit down and begin a regular practice of meditation you may encounter the following stages.

1. Chaos. The mind is all over the place, trying to bring the attention to one place (breath) and hold it there seems like the hardest thing in the World. You will be shocked at how difficult it is, annoyed and disappointed in your self even.

2. As you keep practising and maintain a practice of paying full attention to the FLOW of your breath. you will begin to gradually find the attention begin to settle, and thoughts begin to dissipate.

Thoughts may still arise, and the attention may waver, but time and time again you will bring it back to the flow of your breath, strengthening your concentrative powers. You will feel a subtle peace entering you as concentration improves and you maintain attention on the breath.

3. As you do this you may begin to notice subtle changes, sign-posts, physiological responses along the way. For instance, your left or right ear may flutter. Your head may start to feel as if a powerful invisible force is pressing on your temples around or on the sides of your head, or between your eyes. It can feel like your head is being squeezed in a vice at times. It can be amazing and scary at the same time as the sensations are very real. Be bold, and persevere! What is occurring is that you are clearing energy channels within your subtle body, that previously have not been consciously used. And as these channels are being cleared, you will feel these forces/pressures in and around your head.

4. You may feel or hear disturbances in your room. Things may move, invisible things may touch your hair or body. You may feel taps or feel something touch you. Your head may spontaneously move to the left, or right. As if invisible hands were grabbing them and moving them. You may feel your head or body expand. We are used to our consciousness being limited to the boundaries of one’s skin. You may literally feel your head expand. I remember the first time I experienced this deep in meditation for many hours around the age of 18. it felt as if my head had literally expanded! With my eyes closed in focus, it felt as if my head had grown a good inch in size around in front of my forehead. When I opened my eyes and touched my forehead to feel if it had actually grown , my hands told me a different story, my head physically felt the same as before! Yet closing my eyes again, the sensation of my head being larger was definitely there and real! The boundaries of my consciousness usually felt to be limited by the skin had expanded beyond the boundary of my skin, and that space that it had extended to felt just like “me” I was conscious within that space… Only years later in a Seth book, did he explain the inner senses, and one in particular; The “Expansion or Contraction of the Tissue Capsule” is the sense that I inadvertently activated that night. The ability to expand or contract your energy field.

5. As your concentration improves more, other physiological changes will occur. You will notice that as your concentration and one-pointed mind becomes deeper and the thin sliver of your focused attention becomes sharper. Your body will become more and more rigid and firm. Almost as if it were dead. or as the Yogis would say, as solid as a mountain, immovable. As this happens, the attention can become extremely focused. The eyes may automatically start to slightly roll up in their sockets and point towards the point in between your eyebrows, or third eye region, and you may spontaneously feel to reposition your hands, facing up or spontaneously feel to adopt a mudra.

Jnana Mudra

I would spontaneously adopt the Jnana Mudra even before I knew what it was. Or feel the need to reposition my hands to face outwards and up. You may hear electric like sounds to the left or right of your ears. To me, it sounds like the sound an electric generator makes from a distance, or the sound an old CRT TV emits when muted. A constant ringing in or around the ear. It will get louder and louder. You may feel your heart beating rapidly. You may feel like you are contracting within to your body. You may feel wave like vibrations in your forehead, head or entire body, or parts of your body. You may feel that you are a tiny spark of consciousness existing as a tiny point between the eyebrows, no longer even feeling the body anymore.

6. As you go deeper, you will start feeling strong emotions, Energy. Feelings of increasing well being, Energy and Vitality. These will grow in intensity as your focus improves. It seems that the degree and quality of Vitality experienced is directly proportional to the degree and sharpness of attention. It is as if the focusing of the consciousness into ever sharper focused concentration of attention cuts through the illusionary nature of our reality and penetrates through to a deeper reality. Indeed the Heart of Being and Creation itself. You may feel a range of intensities of sensations in and around the heart centre. You may feel the fluttering of energy, pressure or a lightness. The intensity of the energy can grow to such a degree that at points, you may get the sensation of hearing your heartbeat very loudly in your ears. You may feel your heart beat more intensely, at points thundering with such intensity, it can feel like its going to beat its way out of your chest.

These are all the results of the act of meditating, in clearing your energy channels. As they become purified and consciously used for the first time. The act of meditating and focusing the attention expands them and allows for the Universal Energies to come in and flow through your energy channels. Silencing the mind and focusing the attention allows for this to occur.

You will eventually begin to feel magnificent energies flowing through your Heart. As the energy flowers, you will feel profound Love in your Heart centre and become increasingly sensitive.

7. As you maintain your super focused attention and pay full attention to the breath. The noise of your thoughts has been silenced. The noise/thoughts within your electromagnetic field (aura/energy field, whatever you want to call it) is cleared. Your highly focused and clear attention allows your consciousness to cut through and connect to something much larger…., what seems to happen is this immense source of Power and Energy begins to transmit incredibly powerful and profound quantities of Energy, Vitality, Unspeakable Joy and Bliss, and within the Energy is information. The information manifests as insights, realisations, illuminations. Maintain your attention and focus and go deeper still and you can commune at the heart of Being. The heart of YOUR very own Being, which is the heart of ALL Being.

There are no words that can describe this Energy. And any attempt to… feels irrelevant and pointless. There are NO words that can communicate the entire feeling of the Energy of this Source.

I can only give you a HINT, by using such adjectives as:

Incredible, unspeakable profound Glorious Love, Glory and Power.

Unspeakable Awe and Wonder of the Miracle of Existence.

Unspeakable Joy, Exaltation and Bliss.

A Billion mental Orgasms rushing through your skull.

I remember one night when my focus was extremely sharp, I cut through the boundary and I began to sense the vast energy of it. It was as if it had to mask its total Glory from me and it instead sent out the thinnest hair width thread of energy to me. Within that tiny sliver of a hair-thin thread of Energy….. was unspeakable Glory… filling me with an indescribable Joy. Typing this out, I just cannot find the words to express what was felt within that Energy. I am not doing it justice…

Yet that was merely a hair-thin sliver of Glory transmitted to me… I felt that I could not withstand more of it! It felt like I would literally explode in an orgasm of Bliss if more Joy and its Energy were to be showered upon me. It felt like my physical form could literally not withstand greater quantities of the Energy. And that tiny hair-thin sliver of Energy is ALL I felt I could take. Yet this quantity of energy bestowed upon me was NOTHINGcompared to what I sensed behind the shield it had placed between me and it. It is profoundly VAST!

And even those words are shallow pathetic attempts to convey the Feeling of this Energy… It can only be felt. Its profundity cannot be communicated. There are no human words that can convey the quality and intensity of the Energy, an intensity of Emotions and feelings within it that most humans probably do not even experience in a lifetime.

I know this Energy is the Essence of our Being. The CORE of our Being. This Core of our Being is an Unspeakably Glorious Vast and Infinite Powerhouse of Creativity, Infinite Energy and Vitality.

Ever fractalling out exploring ALL possibilities and ALL postures of Being.

For it seeks to go beyond itself… And every act, every thought you think, every movement you make, is a creative act that takes it beyond itself.

We are the portions of it that extend its experience and Being. In an eternal becoming…

It seeks to know itself, for its true nature is formless. It manifests itself within form to know itself, to go beyond itself.

We are it, and it is Us. Yet the whole is greater than its parts. The whole would not be what it is without the smaller parts.

Ben

What is the meditation duration for each stage..? How long we generally take to reach each stage.. ? Presently I could sit for 40-45 minutes( on floor) one hour( on a sofa).. I am in stage three now. Regards R.Baskar

Ben

Hi Baskar, there is no set time at each stage. All you must do is practice with zero expectations, and an open heart and mind. As you maintain your discipline and practice, you will progress naturally. It is not a race, there is no striving. Merely practice with ZERO expectations. Practice with a joyful curiousity to understand the Fabric of Existence, and the Nature of your Self.

When you do so, you will begin to notice things and expansion is inevitable.

I have raised my energy all though these steps, its for real. The energy is indescribable, sometimes its like a clamp squeezing on the pineal gland, and sometimes its like a full on blissful trip. I have come out of them panicing, crying with joy, energetic and dancing, relaxed and content, and changed with new insight. If there is anyone who wants to learn about the real magic in the world, they must visit this page. Best of luck to everyone else trying!